Global Media Project

Facing Abu Ghraib

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:37:42 -0500

"Facing Abu Ghraib" is a video about Errol Morris's visit to the Global Media Project on Wednesday, May 7th to discuss the film Standard Operating Procedure. With Christopher Lydon, James Der Derian and members of the Global Media class, Errol Morris explored the visual and political effects of the images from the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in 2004. You can view the video and read more about the event here

Iron Man vs the M-I-M-E, Reloaded.

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 10:51:48 -0500

- Anne Krapu

(Note: All images from Google Images, except for screen shots of FirstShowing.net, MetaFilter, and PDF of AF Instruction 35-101.)

Global Advertising - Final Project

Wed, 14 May 2008 12:57:24 -0500

Willem Van Lancker - Global Media Final Project

Global Advertising Media: History & Theory

Word Document of the Essay:
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Adobe .pdf of the Presentation:
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The History of Modern Advertising

In the early 20th Century, Advertising was not a significant facet of global media. In Europe, advertising was limited to posters and newspapers and focused on the image, portrayed in bold, eye-catching airbrushed posters promoting everything from cigarettes to vacations. These were known largely as object posters, designated thus, based on the fact that they focused solely on featuring an object to be sold, its name, and very little else. In the United States, where industry was still founded on notions of survival and not extravagant aspirations of achieving a higher socioeconomic status, advertising lacked enthusiasm and the industry was peopled mostly with technicians and not brilliant intellectuals or creatives. It was the widespread view that all products being offered in the market were the for the most part of equal quality and selection was mostly driven by location and availability. This led to print advertising that was mostly text heavy and lacking in any true art direction or originality.

Down with Murdoch!

Sat, 10 May 2008 13:32:29 -0500

Here's a happy little addendum to my literature on media consolidation: Rupert Murdoch's News Corp just announced today that it has withdrawn its bid to buy Newsday from the Tribune Company. News Corp already owns two major papers and two tv stations in the New York market, not to mention hundreds of holdings in different media all over the world. The likely buyer is Cablevision, a cable and broadband provider based mostly on the East Coast.

Review of Al Jazeera

Fri, 09 May 2008 20:01:11 -0500

After more than anyone’s fair share of technical problems (stolen computer, problems with logging into the blog), here it is – my belated “review” of Al Jazeera.

I watched a combination of Al Jazeera live broadcasts and clips on its YouTube site, with an eye for comparison with American broadcast news. The first things I noticed about Al Jazeera were mainly aesthetic: There are no omnipresent corner graphics to remind you what channel you are watching, or to designate whether you are observing “local,” “nation-wide,” or “international” news. The swirling clouds of color that indicate a change in topic are kept to a minimum. There’s little thunderous music, and few attention-grabbing declaratory headlines of the kind that resemble Microsoft WordArt on patriotic steroids. One of few similarities: the English language anchor delivers the news against the backdrop of the US Capital Building.

American officials have accused Al Jazeera of being “sensationalist” because the network is less squeamish than its American counterparts about showing scenes of violence and carnage, particularly in Iraq and Palestine. Yet stylistically, Al Jazeera is cleaner, more minimalist, less bombastic, less spectacular than mainstream American news, and for the most part, its style of reportage follows suit. If American broadcast news is held captive by the society of the spectacle, perhaps the news itself is spectacle enough for Al Jazeera’s English language viewers.

In his book Voices of the New Arab Public, Marc Lynch credits Al Jazeera with permanently changing Arab political discourse, and with creating a “new Arab public” that prefers frank discussion, opposing viewpoints, global focus and the occasional human interest story to the unadulterated Arabist rhetoric and the anti-critical state-sponsored Arab news outlets of the 1990’s. Al Jazeera’s outward-focused English-language segments display all of these things, and provide ample historical, political, and economic context to each story reported. Footage of pro-China rallies in Paris and pro-independence Tibetan demonstrations in India are shown side by side as Al Jazeera traces the global progress of the Olympic flame. A report on murdered and missing women in a US-Mexican border town features interviews with their mothers, and an investigation into labor conditions in the large factories where the women once worked. A report on air pollution in Daka, the capital of Bangladesh, plants blame on industry leaders, lax environmental laws, and ineffectual environmentalists alike. (Al Gore would be proud.) These broadcasts clearly aim to attract, and perhaps to form, a well-informed, critically thinking public with minimal idealistic bent.

I’m more interested, though, in Al Jazeera’s coverage of, and relationship with, its home base, the vaguely defined and hardly cohesive Arab world. According to Marc Lynch, the Arab response to Al Jazeera has been overwhelmingly positive, as evidenced by high confidence measured by public opinion polls and a host of alternate “pan-Arab” news outlets that have sprung up in the past five years to lend Al Jazeera the ultimate form of flattery. This trend of regionally-focused rather than state-based media, though, inevitably confronts problems of identity, in defining itself, and in defining its audience. We might ask: what kind of coverage allows Al Jazeera to self- identify as a – perhaps as the – Arab news outlet?

Al Jazeera attracts and maintains its audience by covering issues pertinent to Arab life in a way that at once shapes and challenges the Arab mindset(s). News coverage, panel discussions, and call-in talk shows are all part of this equation. Al Jazeera also builds credibility with its listenership through extensive coverage of stories that are sure to resonate with the majority of the network’s intended audience; these are issues that most of the Arab world can get behind, and feel good about getting behind, and feel a certain solidarity with other Arabs, and other viewers, who also get behind. So on a broader level, Al Jazeera very much caters to its target audience, much like al-Minar speaks to the Shia Islamists of Lebanon and state-run Syrian media panders to the Alawite elite allied with the Assad family. But it does so, I’ve found, without losing its critical eye, and this is what sets Al Jazeera apart from its more unabashedly slanted counterparts.

Perhaps the best example of this is Al Jazeera’s coverage of Palestine. Al Jazeera covers Palestine-related issues – the “peace process,” the economic collapse of Gaza – extensively and sympathetically. An article on the prospects for the right of return for Palestinian refugees declares “there are at least four-and-a-half million reasons why peace continues to elude the Middle East.” A broadcast on an Israeli incursion into Gaza begins “it was, quite literally, a bloodbath.” Yet a panel discussion on the Oslo Accords mainly places blame for their failure on Yassir Arafat, and a discussion with two (American) “specialists” speculates on whether or not Jimmy Carter’s efforts to involve Hamas in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations with be successful, or helpful to the process. Perhaps most strikingly, Al Jazeera also recently aired a short form documentary on the lives of IDF foot soldiers called “One Shot” which shows the young conscripts (though not their political bosses) in a sympathetic light. This kind of coverage suggests a nuanced, if not quite “objective,” approach to such a deeply resonant cause, and defies the American conception of Al Jazeera as a radical and one-sided news outlet.

Through constant and connected coverage of events in the Arab world, Marc Lynch tells us, Al Jazeera works towards building a “common Arab narrative,” or a collective understanding of which trends and issues affect today’s Arab populations. This narrative, in turn, informs a certain Arab political identity, which goes beyond the common ties of language, religion, and culture. Yet the very concept of an “Arab political identity” is rife with contradiction, and often detached from actual policy and leadership. And it has a troubled past. The Arab Nationalist movement of the mid twentieth century, which sought to translate the common cultural and historical heritage of the Arab world into political unity, culminated in the creation of the Arab League, the brief unification of Egypt and Syria into the United Arab Republic, and several other attempts to federate multiple states under political or religious pretense. But lasting Arab unity, the way leaders like Nasser had envisioned it, failed due to fundamental problems in the framework within which it was meant to develop. For one thing, the policies meant to bring about this unity were conceived and carried out by a small minority of Arab leaders and cooperative intellectuals; this was a unity of elites, not an identity available to Arab publics in general. Moreover, there existed no structure for dealing with internal dissension among these “united” entities, and disagreement over contentious issues such as policy towards Israel, the role of political Islam, and relationships with external powers were ultimately insurmountable. Nearly half a century later, and in light of this year’s ill-conceived Arab League Summit in Damascus (belittled by several major states and boycotted completely by Lebanon), Al Jazeera itself (barometer of Arab mood) has inaugurated a 9-part series on the future of Arab unity, the title piece of which begins with the question, “Has the dream of Arab unity run out of steam?”

In addition, a major criticism of Arab identity, then and now, is that it has largely negative origins - that is to say, the “Arab world” is united only in opposition to the hostile forces of imperialism, globalization, Israel, America, what have you. The Arab world, as well as the media that represents it, is often painted in this way by American sources, and in its more radical moments, it defines itself as such (think of Sayid Qutb’s denouncements of the ignorant unIslamic world (jahiliyya), or more obviously, everything Bin Laden). Marc Lynch tells us that Al Jazeera’s precursors, the “old” Arab media, found it easy to garner support by rallying against the “enemies” of the Arab world, rather than pursuing the more difficult task of turning its critical eye inward.

Against such precedent, the task of fomenting a critical yet cohesive collective Arab psyche – positively, no less – is no small feat. Yet the idea that such a “New Arab Public” may be based, this time, on a supranational structure (a multimedia outlet) rather than any coalition of states or political bosses is promising. What’s most striking about Al Jazeera, then, is not the type of reporting that it performs but rather the space that it has created, where officials, “intellectuals,” and members of the formerly loud-but-voiceless “Arab street” can meet and argue as never before. (Though whether this has, or will, usher in a new era of accountability of transparency remains to be seen.) Because it transcends the state system and (potentially) involves a large percentage of this new “public” in its dialogue, this network seems poised to succeed where the Arab Nationalists failed - namely, in fomenting a common identity and loose political solidarity that can define, through common discourse rather than common enemy, what it means to be Arab.

In order to set itself apart from the “old” Arab unity, and the “old” Arab media that represented it, Al Jazeera’s approach to news media includes controversial coverage of contentious Arab issues. This approach works towards establishing, Marc Lynch argues, “the possibility of disagreement, the simple and essential lesson that policy disagreements need not necessarily mean excommunication from a community of identity.” In seeking out and sometimes shaping the Arab perspective of the 21st century, Al Jazeera understands that this perspective is rarely singular. And so the network seeks to represent, and to legitimize, viewpoints that are often in direct opposition. On Al Jazeera English, talk show hosts fire off tough questions about the responsibility of other Arab leaders for Saddam Hussein’s humanitarian crimes. An anchorman grills the Syrian ambassador to the United States about the possibility of a covert Syrian nuclear program. A report on 40-year prison sentences for Muslim brotherhood members complains bitterly that the Mubarak government referred the civilian defendants to military courts, and that family members and defense lawyers were banned from the trials; a member of Egypt’s National Democratic Party appears to defend the government, and a formerly imprisoned Muslim Brotherhood member calls in to protest not just the proceedings but the entire ethos of detaining opposition members.

These are the kinds of uncomfortable conversations that Al Jazeera goes out of its way to facilitate, proving by example that “Arabs can disagree and still be Arabs” (Lynch). Many of Al Jazeera’s programs have adopted the strategy of pitching polar extremes against each other in debate in hopes of opening and enhancing dialogue on particularly contentious issues. Yet this approach sometimes backfires when it leaves the “rational center” of an issue, and the subtleties therein, largely unrepresented. That is to say, when ideologues of opposite poles hammer away at the big questions, details and nuance seem lost.

This was evident in some of the programming I viewed about the current state of Iraq. In one panel moderated by Riza Khan, a Qatari news editor, who argues for continued American presence in Iraq because of Bush’s “responsibility” to “fix what he broke,” squares off with an American professor who counters that Americans will not support a drawn out war in Iraq because the escalating civil war is “your problem, and we did what we could.” (As a side note, the professor came off looking incredibly ignorant, to a point that embarrassed me as an American college student.) The details of these disparate grand designs for the future – time tables, regions, projected costs, neighborhood relations, et cetera – were not discussed, mostly because these panelists just could not break through their grand ideological differences to get to the nitty gritty of actual policy. Such debate is important (and no doubt entertaining), but it needs to be supplemented with the kind of discussions that leave room for subtlety and that address concrete issues, particularly when the subject matter is a current war.

And so the question remains: has Al Jazeera – can Al Jazeera – become a new platform for Arab unity? Certainly, Al Jazeera’s arrival has permanently changed landscape of Arab media and ripped legitimacy away from many complacent, state-based news outlets. And Al Jazeera has done more than almost any other institution to keep the Arab public involved in discussions about its future – this unity, if it succeeds, won’t just be one of statesmen and elites, of mutual enemies and border elisions. Of course, certain dangers remain: Al Jazeera could become another one of many pundit-like Arab news outlets, or alternately, it could become so dedicated to argument that actual reporting falls to the wayside. Yet Al jazeera runs a lot of introspective programming, examining its own role and its own performance in shaping and informing Arab opinion, and occasionally comparing its coverage to CNN, BBC, and the like. As long as Al Jazeera maintains this critical eye, on itself and on everything else, the chances of continued public service to the Arab world, and perhaps the rest of the world, are good. Here’s to hoping.

And a disclaimer: While the themes of this “review” (more of an essay, really) deal mainly with Al Jazeera’s relationship to its Arabic-speaking base, the examples that I’ve cited come from English language broadcasts and articles. I know from experience (having Arabic class assignments of reading AJ’s articles, and trying to move this process along by reading the English language versions of these “same” articles) that Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Original do not report the exact same news, in the exact same manner. They are, in fact, different services, and differences in their coverage range from (translated) vocabulary used and tone implied to sources cited and issues emphasized. I don’t think the disparities are drastic enough to discredit general ideas, formed from watching the English service, on what Al Jazeera broadcasts, and why, and to what end. But it’s something to think about.

Reforming the Fourth Estate: The Future of Media Literature Review

Wed, 07 May 2008 18:27:09 -0500

In The Future of Media, a collection of authors from varied backgrounds (the majority as activists) argue against increased media consolidation at the hands of the Federal Communications Commission, promoting grassroots activism to halt a trend that flies in the face of our democratic principles. This trend toward monopoly is nothing new to American business; but it picked up speed in 1996 when Congress passed the Telecommunications Act, drastically relaxing ownership regulations in the media sector and paving the way for corporate hegemonies like Clear Channel’s dominance of the radio waves. In the name of free market competition, deregulation allowed most of the images and sounds seen and heard on a daily basis, all over the world, to fall into the hands of only five major corporations: General Electric, Viacom, News Corporation, Time Warner and Disney. Instead of fostering competition, the act shrank the media industry into an even smaller group of self-interested parties that Robert McChesney, an academic media critic and one of the book’s editors, likens to Hyman Roth’s Havana patio in The Godfather Part II [12]. In 2003, the F.C.C. approved another set of deregulatory measures that would have allowed the media pool to shrink even further, has it not provoked a firestorm of citizen outrage and grassroots activism on both ends of the political spectrum. Several of the essays in The Future of Media describe the democratic fervor whipped up by the F.C.C.’s rule changes, culminating in a series of hearings before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which struck down the changes in 2004.
Each of the authors takes up the mantle of media reform forged in 2003, urging readers to get involved in the “fight to limit conglomerate swallowing of media outlets by sensible limits on multiple and cross-ownership of TV and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, publishing companies, and other information sources,” as Bill Moyers puts it in the book’s introduction [xxi]. The cause of media reform stems from the principle that the media are supposed to balance their financial interests with a concern for their audience, the public, whom they are obligated to inform as well as entertain. As F.C.C. Commissioner Michael J. Copps points out in his essay, “Where is the Public Interest in Media Consolidation?”, broadcast media companies receive their free licenses to use the publicly-owned electromagnetic spectrum in exchange for a pledge to serve the public interest (this system is known as the public-trustee framework, or the public interest standard) [120]. As those media companies join bigger, vertically-integrated corporations, where they are only one of many profit-seeking operations, the public interest loses out to the bottom line.
The problem is not a vast and insidious corporate conspiracy to control the hearts and minds of average Americans—it’s more subtle than that. Corporate emphasis on profit forces out programming that genuinely reflects the makeup and interests of the public in local markets, because selling more ad time means targeting the most commercially coveted demographics and promotes a “lowest common denominator” approach. Funding for informative and locally-geared programming gets cut as corporations consolidate their resources in order to maximize the ratio of revenue to production costs. Corporate honchos are also likely to hire and put on the air people who look and think like them, at the expense of voices of dissent. In the essay “Media Bias: How to Spot It—And How to Fight It,” Peter Hart cites a study conducted by his organization, the media watchdog FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting), which found that 92% of U.S. sources interviewed on network newscasts in 2001 were white and 85% were male [52]. Not surprisingly, corporate representatives were interviewed on the air 35 times more often than representatives of organized labor. FAIR’s study illustrates how the consolidation of media production and distribution runs directly counter to the Supreme Court’s opinion that “the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public” (quoted by Schwartzman, et al. in “The Legal Case for Diversity in Broadcast Ownership,” 153). Furthermore, the media’s conglomeration means that the people in control are increasingly elite, detached by class and culture from the majority of the public they are supposed to serve. If the elites in corporate media join forces with the elites in government, whose interests more closely resemble their own, then the media’s role as the “fourth estate,” a muckraking check on official power, will go out the window.
All of this is particularly scary in our postmodern age, which is so saturated with images and sound bites that there is no escape from mediation. If global media is a crucial node in the current heteropolar political landscape, as this course has argued, then the question of who controls the media is a direly urgent one. If media has the power to compete with governments in mobilizing political action and influencing our values and principles, then what happens when the media falls into the hands of an elite few, driven solely by the interests of free market capital?
Advocates for deregulation insist that the Internet and cable television will make up for the diversity lost in the consolidation of the newspaper and broadcast industries. But in “The Legal Case for Diversity in Broadcast Ownership” in The Future of Media, Andrew Jay Schwartzman, Cheryl A. Leanza and Harold Feld (lawyers who argued the case against the F.C.C. for the Media Access Project in 2003) maintain that the internet is still just a red herring. “Because of the economics of news production, only a handful of websites control the bulk of news generation and distribution over the Internet,” they write. “Although anyone remains free to set up a website and post or send information to the rest of the world, this freedom does not equate with an ability to effectively compete with existing media companies. The question is not whether news is somehow discoverable, but whether it enters into the public’s awareness” [155]. On the surface, this argument seems a little outdated. Political blogs like Talking Points Memo and the Drudge Report existed when the book was published in 2005, but they have only recently risen to prominence as the potential messiahs of 21st century news, especially since TPM received a Polk Award this year for its coverage of the US Attorney scandal. So maybe the Internet already plays a more important role as an alternative news source than it did three years ago. But the authors’ point about public awareness is well taken. Although online news has certainly become more important, it still pales when compared to mainstream news in terms of viewership and cultural permeation. Everyone knows what CNN is (we even have an effect named after it), but it’s unlikely that anybody outside politically well-informed circles has ever heard of TPM. And although the right people might be reading the blogs, allowing the info they dig up to circulate more widely—the US Attorneys scandal is a case in point—they still fail to reach an audience anywhere near as large as those of the network news shows or the 24-hour cable news channels. The other crucial distinction between online news aggregates and the mainstream news is money: no blog has the finances to bankroll the kind of investigative reporting that the media’s fourth estate role entails. Although the aggregation model is gaining traction as a valuable way to compile and distribute good information, the blogs have yet to figure out a reliable means of sustaining themselves financially while expanding their operations. All of which goes to show, yet again, the defects of a media system that depends on the capitalist model.
If traditional television news is still the average American’s main source of information, then who controls the media is just as important today as it was a few years ago. Indeed, as very recent events have proven, the question of media consolidation is not off the table despite reformers’ victory in 2004. In December, the F.C.C. relaxed a ban on ownership of different media in the same market, allowing companies to own one newspaper and one TV station in one city in the top twenty markets, provided that the station is not in the top four and there are at least eight other news sources. The Senate Commerce Committee passed a “resolution of disapproval” on April 24 to invalidate the new policy; but President Bush has threatened to veto the resolution if it passes in the Legislature, and several media titans have already filed a lawsuit against it on the grounds that it violates their First Amendment rights. Cross-media ownership is an especially pressing issue in light of current controversy over one of the world’s biggest media markets, New York City, where Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is on its way to controlling several of the biggest media outlets. Thanks to F.C.C.-granted waivers of the pre-existing cross-media ownership ban, News Corp already owns The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal and two television stations, and is in talks to purchase Newsday from the Tribune Company. The sale would put Murdoch’s corporation in control of three of the country’s ten largest papers.
The authors of The Future of Media clearly anticipated in 2005 that the fight for media reform was far from over; the book is presented not as a commemoration of the successes of 2003 but as a primer for concerned citizens and future activists. The back of the book features a 70-page media reform action guide, with step-by-step guides to filing complaints with the F.C.C., monitoring local media outlets, organizing like-minded individuals, and other levels of activism. This call to action echoes what many see as the key strength of alternative news gathering on the internet: putting authority over information into the hands of the people that that information is supposed to serve. In our era of media conglomerates, we need individuals and local groups to keep an eye on policy and production/distribution institutions in the same way that blogs monitor the mainstream news. In order to preserve the fourth estate, we need a grassroots fifth estate to mediate the media.

Sources:
“Murdoch Taking on F.C.C. Media Rule.” Stephen Labaton. The New York Times, April 23 2008.
“Murdoch Closes in on Newsday and Reshapes Journal.” Richard Perez-Pena and Tim Arango. The New York Times, April 22 2008.
“Senate Committee Votes to Overturn F.C.C. Cross-Media Ownership Rules.” Katherine Skiba. US News & World Report, April 24 2008.

Davis Guggenheim returns to Brown...

Fri, 02 May 2008 14:30:37 -0500

I'm sure many of you have seen or heard about this, but thought I would post it here anyway.

“Inconvenient Truth” Filmmaker Speaks at Brown University

The YouTube Top 10: analyzing the potential for caturday and MJ to change our lives

Thu, 01 May 2008 18:49:14 -0500

Megan Loucks
*Extra Credit* Thematic Essay

To begin this musing on YouTube, I think it is only appropriate that I refer you to something that began this class for all of us way back in February: the 300. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNqiSkd1M6k&feature=related
This is the PG Version, where swords and guns are replaced by cakes and candy. It is international relations done right. Utopia indeed.

As of 2007 it was calculated that every month, YouTube receives 20 million visitors. Each day, 100 million video clips are watched and 65,000 new videos are posted. Much has been made about the popularity of YouTube and the reverberations felt in mainstream news outlets by its videos. The phenomenon surrounding such video-sharing web sites (the social, political, and/or economic) has been called “The YouTube Effect”. In the current presidential race, campaigns have used the YouTube platform to reach out to young voters. And who could forget the first ever “CNN/YouTube Democratic Debate” on July 23rd 2007, which as some people said, helped make political debate matter again.

Millions of people spend time on YouTube, but what are they watching? The question posed to me for this class was what this week’s list of the most popular videos on YouTube say about the influence of YouTube and society at large. But I wonder, does video popularity necessary translate into influence? Does this really mark a shift in how the average person interacts with the media, and the community around them? These are big questions, and perhaps a look at the “most popular list” will help.

For those YouTube newbies, one should know that the politics and strategies behind making it on the “most viewed”, “most favorited”, or “most discussed” lists are heated points of discussion (and controversy) among the YouTube community. In fact, the ability of these lists to accelerate a video or user’s popularity can not be underestimated. I, like many others, have often clicked on a video in the “most viewed” list, only to finish the video with the aching feeling that I deserve those five minutes of my life back. You learn quickly about the capricious nature of celebrity and that numbers are too often misleading. The influence that the sheer set-up of YouTube (layout, list organization, featured videos ,etc ) has on the dynamics of video sharing and thus, “The YouTube Effect”, deserves its own separate discussion.

So in acknowledging that these different lists give different meanings to the term “popularity” I chose “most favorited videos of the day” as a good balance. On Monday night I looked up the Top 10 most favorited videos of the day and spent the next half hour watching… a Michael Jackson impersonation, a pseudo-music video, a video game review, a time-lapse painting, and the always popular booty-shaking female. The latter will not be included in this analysis. Yes, a very typical day on YouTube. More entertaining than it sounds.

In describing the list, I will do my best to connect these videos to broader YouTube trends, and if I’m lucky maybe even psycho-social critique.

So taking the #1 spot is a clip from Britain’s Got Talent, favorited 4,446 times and viewed over 400,000 times. No surprise with this one. The demonstration of exotic and impressive talents is a hallmark of YouTube. The average Joe or Jane or even Mohamed, can easily have their spot in the starlight. In this clip, Suleman Mirza, who notes himself as “one of the best Michael Jackson tribute artists”, adds an Asian Banghra flair to his dance with the help of a turban-clad dance partner.

The second place video, favorited 1,578, is difficult to describe, because I am withholding the particularly strong feelings I have about the band’s music. It’s the teen sensation the Jonas Brothers and their song “Kung-Fu Grip” played in time with a slideshow of the three dark-haired bushy-browed brothers in their signature tight pants and purity rings.

A moment of Jonas Brothers lyrical zen before going on to the #3 spot.

“ Sometimes I wish I had a kung-fu grip;
Never let her slip away, she'd be my girl
….
I'm so in love with her.
I don't care who knows that I'm ready to fight, ready to go;
Just like a GI Joe ”

Walter B couldn’t have said it better.
In third place is something this class will appreciate. “Funny Cats #4”, subtitled “Caturday Forever!”, shows us all that the internet’s mutual celebration of cat obsession will never stay contained to Fridays. Favorited 1,396 times on Monday night, a check today revealed that over 637,000 people have tuned in. The #4 heading belies the impossibly large volume of similar pet-hommage videos, particularly of cats. Users compile funny cat photos into slideshows, often with some animation to amplify the sheer hilarity of seeing kittens tucked inside a woman’s bra. I have stayed away from these videos in the past, but while watching the whole 1 minute and 55 seconds worth of cats and kittens (set to pulsating techno music), I couldn’t help but crack up at the sight of “zombie cat” or “invisible onion and knife cat”. Kudos to user “HilariousVideosLOL” for converting me to the dark side.

Grabbing the #4 spot with a close 1,068 favorites is “Grand Theft Auto 4 Video Review – Exclusive!!! (Xbox 360)”. I am not a video-gamer, but the review was informative and well done. Praising the storyline, the game play, and the ability to play your friends online, user Mysteriouskk shows continuous scenes of the game being played in all its realistic graphic glory. He adds that a new feature is the “occasional morality twist”, meaning that your decisions to kill or not to kill somebody will affect dialogue and future missions. It appears that reality has finally been inserted into virtual reality. With all the hubbub about GTA being a violent soul-sucking video game, it seems that the makers finally threw parents a bone.

The #5 spot is a video of an artist painting a classic Pin-Up-themed woman, but sped up to meet the continually decreasing attention span of our generation (a quick search on YouTube reveals 24,700 time lapse videos). To be quite honest, even just five minutes left me unsatisfied. In a strange way, watching it made me long for The Joy of Painting; those simpler, better days, when Bob Ross would explain why we never really make mistakes, but rather just “happy little accidents”.

#6 or “RSMV Lay Down- Priestess” is a music video of the song Lay Down by Priestess made by assembling graphics and characters from the video game Runescape by Jagex. In the description the user explains “If you are not a fan of Runescape, and found this as a search result for the band Priestess or the song Lay Down, please simply go back and continue searching the results. It's not my intention for this to be a common result”. To him I say, enjoy the accidental fame, enjoy it! The video does seem to have a serious contingent of fans though, who inquire with such questions as “How'd you do the sleep emote?”, which is of course “a spell from the Lunar Magic spellbook”, not to be confused with “a teleport orb from goblin city Dorgesh-kaan”.
Trust me, I am just as lost as you are.

#7 is Prince performing Radiohead’s “Creep” live at Coachella. Famous musicians frequently are in the top favorite lists. This is especially true for music videos for songs that are on the Billboard Top 100. And the nature of online video posting frequently produces an instaneous concert clip or celebrity snafoo caught on tape (or both – see “Beyonce Falling Down Stairs”).

Taking the #8 spot is “Speak Out Against Hate Speech” : a seven minute video posted by tyleroakley but made through the collaboration of about a dozen youtubers. The video description explains, “Through the new Sharing options, this message could spread internationally and could be featured globally. Do your part to fight for peace and equality and make the message be seen.” The video shows YouTubers, many of them well-known faces among the YouTube community, repeating certain words of hate and then asking the viewer how they think those words make people feel. It’s a simple, well edited video with a powerful message.

A frequently overlooked aspect of YouTube is the networking done within the YouTube Community. Video collaborations like these are a frequent siting. The ability of YouTube to connect people across the world through video adds a whole new dimension to internet socializing.

#9 is “Many Chinese Students attack Tibet People in Seoul, S Korea 2008. 04. 27.” There have been many videos posted recently in reaction to the olympic torch run and violence in Tibet. The chinese government has received repeated hits from YouTube's free media. Frankly, I am surprised such a serious topic made it to number nine, though “violent titles” automatically get an advantage in attracting hits.

For #10 or “Ron Paul Hits it out of the Park on CNN American Morning”, Ron Paul proclaims to John Roberts that the “GOP can’t shut me out” and that he is still in the race. The author celebrates the fact that the video made the front page of Digg magazine, reflecting yet again, the ability of YouTube to infiltrate other media sources.

Despite all my loyalty to YouTube, I still question the hype about the “YouTube Effect”. I see it more as an evolution, rather than a revolution. In many ways this way of video sharing is a great equalizer. The common man is both judger and judged. There is much excitement about the interaction of YouTube and mainstream television news outlets. Yet the videos referenced, like any other news clip, are often taken out of context, used to advance political agendas, or meaningless fluff. The biggest effect in my mind is that the average American, presented now with so many diverse video formats, is being forced to learn that video, like any other medium, is something that must be read. And this, is a major contribution.

But above all, YouTube is what you make of it. Depending on what you are looking for, and where you click, YouTube can be bare bones escapism or mind-opening education. It can be a source of exposure to other cultures or a place where stereotypes are mocked and reinforced (for example the Japanese seem to dominantly represented by gameshows like Human Tetris). And yes the trash, hate speech, and propaganda videos are there. The mainstream wins more than you would hope. The amount of tribute videos and movie re-edits seems to reveal an America ( a young America? ) that is bored, so so bored. YouTube can seem to embody a neverending pursuit of and obsession with celebrity. And of course, it is a place where reputations are made and broken. Many an awkward teenage boy have been forever sent into hiding. (The first to fall was Star Wars Kid, I predict “Fat kid on rollercoaster” will be the next).

The ability of YouTube to give people a sense of voice and influence is undoubtedly incredible, however contested that actual influence is. The ability to film and upload a video doesn’t require the kind of technical know-how of website creation. You don’t need to have a mastery of language (the butchery of the english language is more than welcome on discussion boards). While scouring YouTube videos, one can’t help but marvel at the sheer diversity and complexity of humanity. YouTube can be the source of that warm nostalgic feeling when a video awakens a memory like nothing else ever could. It often appears like condensed soup: American pop culture in a can. And in a world where time is crunched, saved, and cherished, YouTube fills a necessary niche: compacted entertainment for the ever growing pace of this global human network.

1. Naim, Moisés. « The YouTube Effect ». http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3676. Foreign Policy Online. January/February 2007.

David Hoffman vBlog

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:04:54 -0500

Errol Morris in the New Yorker

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:03:44 -0500

I haven't yet seen SOP, but I imagine it mirrors much of what Errol Morris and Philip Gourevitch discussed in a different medium last month:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/24/080324fa_fact_gourevitch

I'm particularly interested in the rapport Morris, a film director, must have built with "the woman behind the camera" at Abu Ghraib, Sabrina Harman for her to have spoken so candidly.

Psychology of the Spectacle: Considering the Impact of Sputnik in the Post 9/11 Era

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:12:04 -0500

Interviewees in David Hoffman’s new film, Sputnik Mania, compare the launch of the Russian satellite, Sputnik, to “the discovery of America,” “the first shot at Lexington and Concord,” and “the second coming of Christ.” Scott Hubbard, of NASA describes it as “one of those moments in history when all of a sudden all of your thought processes changed.”

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, “the first man made object ever to leave the atmosphere and successfully orbit the earth” on October 4th 1954, America reacted with fervor (Sputknikmania.com). It was the height of the cold war and this bold display of Soviet strength struck terror in the hearts of political and military strategists who saw in the rocket “an intercontinental ballistic missile that could potentially carry a nuclear bomb.” On the Monday following Sputnik’s launch, “political and military leaders appeared in print, on the radio and on TV, telling [the American people] that Sputnik was a threat to [their] security [and] that it was launched as an aggressive attack.” Sputnik, they said, was “the first shot in a cold war that could quickly become very hot” (Sputnik Mania).

The film, released as part of a year- long program commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the satellite’s launch, draws upon archival footage and interviews with key figures from the Sputnik era, including individuals from NASA, The Jet Propulsion Lab and NPR. Key insights into the Soviet view are provided by Sergei Kruschev, son of the Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who lead the Soviet Union in the years after Sputnik’s launch.

Sputnik Mania deftly portrays the launch of the rocket and key events in the year that followed. The film’s emphasis however, is not upon historical detail. Hoffman is concerned less with relating the exactitudes of the technological and political developments represented by Sputnik, than by conveying the “spectacular” dimensions of this event and the transformative effect it had upon Americans’ worldview.

In Cultures in Orbit, Lisa Parks describes the ways in which vision has been transformed by the satellite. She uses the term “televisual” to describe not only “the technical apparatus or popular pleasures of broadcasting,” but also, and more significantly, the “different structures of the imaginary and/ or epistemological structures that have radiated from and taken shape around the medium over its history”(12).

The launch of Sputnik grossly undermined Americans’ sense of security and superiority. Life magazine described the launch as a “devastating blow to the prestige of the United States” and a man interviewed on a nightly news program expressed confusion, asking, “Where is our pride? Where are we? Why don’t we have a satellite up there?” Senator Lyndon B Johnson himself lamented, “Soon the Russians will be dropping bombs on us from space like kids dropping rocks from freeway overpasses.”

America hurried to catch up with the Soviets and launch its own satellite. It was like salt in a wound when a much-anticipated launch at Cape Canaveral in December failed. Sputnik Mania’s narrator Liev Schreiber relates, “It took just seven seconds to set back a nation’s pride.”

Hoffman depicts two distinct though not unrelated sides to the American reaction to Sputnik. Many were struck with fear, of annihilation or at least of the triumph of the “godless communists.” Hoffman explains that “fear changed people” and notes that “Hollywood and our office of civil defense fed this fear.” Montages in Sputnik Mania attest to the proliferation of apocalypse films, and clips from government advertisements include messages recommending that individuals “build shelters and build them right [away].”

However, Hoffman suggests that there was also a positive side to the post- sputnik psyche. He details the evolution of “space culture,” including the composition of “satellite songs” by popular musicians and the establishment of the Rocket Boys club. Hoffman suggests that there was a feeling of liberation (The New York Times announced, “Soviet scientists have launched a symbol of man’s liberation from the forces which have hitherto bound him to earth.”) and a renewed curiosity in the world beyond one’s backyard.

Parks provides a critical framework for understanding the two- sided and apparently contradictory nature of the emergent social and psychological state. She writes of the “dialectic of distance and proximity” which has emerged in the age of the satellite and describes the propagation of a “structure of feelings that enables an experience of simultaneous connection and separation”(174). Parks suggests that the satellite engenders an “anxious disorientation” and a feeling of “pleasurable remote control,” as well as a “desire for the presence of the absent other.”

Sputnik Mania arrives fifty years after the launch of Sputnik but only six years after the destruction of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. Hoffman does not address parallels between the two historical moments explicitly. When asked about this choice he said, “Am I going to talk about the present? I’m never going to mention it. But I’m going to make a drama about 50 years ago that everyone of you is going to connect to today.”

Hoffman is successful in suggesting these connections without stating them plainly. One cannot help but think of George Bush warning America about the threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction as you watch a clip in which a 1950s political leader says to his constituency, “Lets not fool ourselves. This may be our last chance to secure the means to save our nation from annihilation.”

In an interview with San Francisco Chronicle reporter, Steven Winn, Hoffman reflected upon our reaction to 9/11 and made a distinction between the two moments in history. He said, “Recently its just been fear, fear, fear. I think that the more inspirational side that characterized the space race… has completely gone missing” (San Francisco Chronicle, October 3, 2007).

Reflecting upon Hoffman’s statement, I am led to wonder if there are in fact any “Rocket Boys” in the post 9/11 era. If there were, who would they be? Is there a still a possibility for a “structure of feelings that enables an experience of simultaneous connection and separation”(174) or does George Bush preclude the possibility of this dialectic as he “audaciously declares to the global community [and to the American people], 'you’re either with us or against us!'" (Parks,178)?

References:

Hoffman, David, Sputnik Mania, 2007.
Hoffman, David, Global Media Lab, Watson Institute, April 23, 2008
Parks, Lisa, "Cultures in Orbit (Satellites and the Televisual," Duke University Press, 2005.
Winn, Steven, "On the waves Sputnik I continues to make 50 years later," San Francisco Chronicle, October 3, 2007.

A New Art Form: Categorizing Convergence of Media on the Web

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:45:49 -0500

In the Introduction to “Worship at the Altar of Convergence,” Henry Jenkins defines convergence as the “flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences” (2). He mentions that media convergence is where “old and new media collide” and where “grassroots and corporate media intersect” (2). Walter Benjamin, in his 1936 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” also discusses a sort of convergence between the old, more contemplative forms of art like unique paintings and sculpture and photography or the new, faster-paced media of the cinema. He sees the newer art form as a new mode of representation because of the technological advances on which it depends—particularly the advances in mechanical reproducibility—as well as the fact that it presents new ways of viewing and interacting with art. In the same way that Walter Benjamin considered photography and later, film, new stages in representation, the convergence of media is also a new stage in representation because it too relies on technological advances and mechanical reproduction, and it also changes the way that people view art.

Mechanical reproduction, in Benjamin’s view, makes art more about exhibition and less about a cult experience. Of course Benjamin does mention that this reproducibility diminishes a piece’s “aura,” or authenticity, by removing it from its original context. But he also discusses how it “emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.” Accordingly, reproducibility means that one no longer needs to travel to a specific church to see a specific statue, new works of art such as photographic prints can be moved to a museum, and movies are even less limited to one location because they can be reproduced in multiple towns. Further, each of the distributed copies is indistinguishable from the original piece. Benjamin even claims that “mechanical reproduction is inherent in the very technique of film production.” In this way, film is the epitome of a type of art that is made to be reproduced, thus following his progression of art which claims that the “work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility.” With mechanical reproduction, art in general becomes more about exhibiting and being seen by more people.

With modern convergence of media on the web, even more people can view the art than could view the films that Benjamin describes in 1936. For example, as of April 26, 2008, 15,388,580 people have viewed the popular YouTube video “Shoes,” which was posted only two years ago (YouTube). Moreover, these works get even more exposure because of convergence of media, and the ability of major media companies either to republish or at least reference the artwork in another context. In the same way that mechanical reproduction spreads art to many more viewers, the technology that allows viewers to broadcast their art over the web also expands that art to many more viewers.

Not only can more people view art with the convergence of media on the web, but convergence of new technologies also represents a new form of representation because it allows more people to partake in art production. Starting with the 8mm Zapruder film of JFK’s assassination in 1963, now many people can capture news events on their cameras, cell phones, or on whatever recording technology they have. Moreover, web technology like YouTube allows people to share their art globally. Unlike news of the past, news channels are likely to broadcast an event as a composite of footage from many of these ordinary people who happen to capture an event with their personal technology.
***

For Walter Benjamin, film presents new art techniques that combine to make a totally new art form. He describes how the technique of montage allows filmmakers to put images together in a completely new way, thus conveying the artist’s point of view in a new manner. Close up and slow motion options expand viewers’ horizons. Furthermore, for the first time, worlds with which many of us have little practical experience are opened up to us. This “immense and unexpected field of action” includes every location from taverns to office buildings and allows many of us to explore and see them for the first time.

Benjamin discusses how film is a change in representation because unlike earlier art forms, it successfully creates “changes of place and focus which periodically assail the spectator.” One critic identifies the technique of montage, introduced with film, as the way through which film creates these changes. Specifically, he describes how montage “rips things from their original place in an assigned sequence and reassembles them in ever changing combinations” (Nichols).

The development of montage, according to Benjamin, affects how the viewer interacts with art. Whereas a painting “invites the spectator to contemplation,” the film moves too quickly for the viewer to meditate on one image. He claims that the images “cannot be arrested” and even quotes a radical thinker who posits that in watching movies, his “thoughts have been replaced by moving images” (Duhamel, quoted in Benjamin).

Montage is extremely important for the current artwork on the web because it allows an artist to take known things and splice them together to make a new meaning. An artist can take a speech (for example, Barack Obama’s 2004 national convention speech) and cut it down to what he or she thinks are its essential elements. This editing destroys the illusion of objectivity and enhances a specific point of view, along the lines of what David Hoffmann discussed recently in our class. So though it’s Obama’s speech from the 2004 DNC, it’s the parts that a filmmaker thinks are salient, and set to the music (in one case, the Gladiator soundtrack) that he or she chooses. He or she may not be painting a subject, but is still creating art with his or her message and point of view.

Of course, this technique is what film and montage introduced to the world many years ago. What’s new in the modern era is that people end up distributing their points of view widely over the web. YouTube’s tag line, after all, is “Broadcast Yourself,” which encourages people to do just that. Furthermore, because media corporations can also access the web, your information might reach an even larger audience if they choose to comment on it, either on TV or radio broadcasts or even in Op/Eds in newspapers. In conjunction with convergence of media on the web, montage becomes a much bigger player in the modern world because these point-of-view films can be broadcast much more widely.

Another way that film establishes a new form of representation is that it separates the actor from directly influencing the art. Benjamin comments that film separates the actor from the art because the cameraman inserts his or her point of view into the filmmaking. Whereas an actor on a stage has control over how he presents himself to the audience, in a film the cameraman can film the actor from different angles, or use B roll during the actor’s speech, and thus manipulate how audiences view the actor. Similarly, with convergence on the web, one media source (film) interacts with the publication on the web. As a consequence, viewers are even farther away from the actual event (behind the filmmaker, and then the publication site). They are seeing a YouTube video as a “YouTube Video,” not as a “film by so-and-so” or simply “such-and-such event.”

Moreover, convergence of media on the web allows a shift in how art interacts with reality. While art has always provoked thought and even controversy, with painting the provoked thoughts were more like personal reflections. Now, with widespread YouTube distribution, these thoughts become international discussion and debate. A very clear example is the Bert/Osama picture, which Jenkins focused on. What began as a simple image on a website from California made its way onto anti-American propaganda in Pakistan, which made later appeared on CNN. The convergence between Photoshop technology, worldwide distribution, and attention from news sources such as CNN fueled a very intense international debate. Even the author of the image claimed that his “Bert is Evil” site “has always been contained and distanced from big media. This issue throws it out in the open” and moves the image “too close to reality” (Dino Ignacio, quoted in Jenkins, 2). Convergence now means that art suddenly and acutely influences how we interact on an international level.

Along these lines, Benjamin saw that the evolution of art into mechanically reproduced cinema changed the way that art interacted with politics, in that cinema gave political leaders (and especially the cult of personality, Fascist leaders) more power over the people. Web publication similarly signals a shift in the way that art and politics interact because new and more available technology allows filmmakers to portray political figures in new and interesting ways. We already discussed the filmmaker’s control in broadcasting the salient elements of Obama’s 2004 Democratic National Convention speech. Certainly, that sort of montage means that political leaders are presented in radically new ways. However, the ‘Obamagirl’ video presents Obama in an entirely new way-mashing together song lyrics, pictures of him, and a video of a girl strutting around New York City. No longer is the political leader’s appearance restricted to the speeches that he presents to the crowds. New technology allows all of the separate elements listed above to be combined into a single (hilarious) video that portrays the presidential candidate in an entirely new light.

Moreover, the widespread video distribution on YouTube allows political candidates to get much more exposure. Now, Obama’s 2004 convention speech is all over YouTube (there are ~22 different videos of the speech), and one can see 378 videos of the recent Philadelphia presidential debate. In January, Facebook even broadcaster the New Hampshire debates and allowed people to comment on them. CNN later reported on those public comments, meaning that television viewers were bombarded with news information from many different angles and sources. Considering these effects of convergence, candidates are surely reaching wider audiences. But whereas Benjamin was afraid of increased political audience, this increased distribution results in a dramatic increase in voter participation. In California, 31% of the eligible voting population voted in the in 2004 primary and 41% voted in 2007. In Iowa 6% caucused in 2004 and 16% this past January 2008 (GMU Website).

Another intriguing aspect is that Benjamin wrote about the relationship between art and politics in 1936, before World War II. Considering his emphasis on the interaction between art and politics and war, Benjamin would probably find the following quote, by Hollywood producer William Harrison (Will) Hays in 1939, very interesting: “The primary purpose of motion pictures is entertainment—entertainment which will be effective as such, and entertainment which is, at its best, inspirational” (Cited in Koppes). Clearly, this producer does not see film as promoting a political position, or as trying to influence the public at all. Towards the end of Benjamin’s essay, he writes that “distraction as provided by art presents a covert control” over the masses. If he heard this quote, he would probably point out that though the film industry’s goal may be to provide entertainment, even passive entertainment can be influential. He would point to the masses’ ability to absorb architectural changes passively and thus aid in the evolution of architecture. In the same way, the masses can absorb political messages from film.

Film on the web is clearly a new art form. Suddenly, a video of a man who can fit himself entirely in a rubber balloon is a work of art, as is a compilation photo of Bert from Sesame Street with Osama bin Laden. Convergence of media on the web allows this new art form to exist. Moreover, convergence of media on the web changes the way that art interacts with politics, much like the creation of film changed the way that art interacted with politics in the early part of the 20th century. In this way, convergence of media on the web certainly does represent a new art form.

From this realization, the important question becomes: “what role will this new art form play in the world’s future?” This idea echoes the question that Benjamin put to art in 1936 when he titled his essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Not only does work of art mean the piece of art, but it also means the job of art. In this way, Benjamin examines the role of art in his society. Film and photography certainly continued to play key roles in politics after his essay. Despite Will Hays’ comment, 2500 Hollywood films were released between 1939 and 1945, many of which had to do with the war (Koppes). War photography throughout the Vietnam War sparked a lot of controversy about America’s actions there. In a similar vein, we can discuss how the convergence of media on the web will interact with politics today. As I already mentioned, the convergence of media on the web will have a profound effect on political campaigns including the current presidential campaign because the candidates receive more exposure as well as different types of exposure. Moreover, as the Bert and Osama picture demonstrates, the convergence of media on the web will have a profound effect on how we view, enforce, or condemn freedom of speech internationally and internally. Finally, on a more basic level, convergence of media on the web means that individual human beings will be suddenly much more visible to the world, either by creating videos (or Bert/Osama pictures) or by being in videos that are distributed on the web. I believe that this increase in individual exposure will eventually affect how we live our public lives. Some will become fearful that anything we say or do may be broadcast, and some will be encouraged to pursue new and exciting artistic adventures that themselves push the limits of our new technology into the next form of representation.

Works Cited

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” 1936. [Accessed April 23, 2008]. < http://web.bentley.edu/empl/c/rcrooks/toolbox/common_knowledge /general_communication/benjamin.html>.

Jenkins, Henry. Introduction. Worship at the Altar of Convergence. By Jenkins. New York: New York University Press, 2006. 1-24.

Koppes, Clayton and Black, Gregory. Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits, and Propaganda Shaped World War II. University of California Press 1990. viii, 21.

LIAMKYLESULLIVAN. 2006. Shoes [online]. [Accessed April 26, 2008]. Available from World Wide Web: < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCF3ywukQYA>.

Nichols, Bill. “The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems.” Screen. 21 (1): 22-46. Winter 1988.

Presidential Primary Turnout Rates. March 17, 2008. United States Elections Project at George Mason University. April 26, 2008 .

Just to clarify...

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:20:26 -0500

Our last 'formal' class is tomorrow, as we go into the TerrorDome (2 men in, 1 man out..), but we have a room change to accommodate Honors Thesis presentations in the Joukowsky Forum. We will be two flights up, in Watson's McKinney Seminar room...

VTY
JDD

A Daily Newspaper Stopped Printing, Now Online Only

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:34:00 -0500

This New York Times article tells the tale of a 90 year old daily newspaper, The Capital Times of Madison, Wis, which stopped its printing to live online only. The Capital Times is a perfect example of the death of written press: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/business/media/28link.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

The article itself does not address future steps of news media to incorporate blogging/ open-source news. Perhaps the most interesting section of the article is the link in the upper left hand corner which allows the reader to link up to BlogRunner- self described as "a service from The New York Times that automatically monitors news articles and blog posts and tracks news events as they develop across the Web." What are your thoughts on this attempt by the NY Times? Is this trangressive journalism or not at all? Perhaps BlogRunner keeps the blog peace but does not reach further towards an open-source news.

Either way, it is an interesting article and an interesting attempt by the NY Times to incorporate blogging on the issue of "dead news". I wonder if the NY Times put the link in this article on the death of one paper's printed life because they know that the life of the (future) news is in the hands of these bloggers. Your thoughts?

Screenings galore...and a room change

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:31:28 -0500

Greetings all:

First order of biz is the screening of EM's TPQ (using code to maintain operational secrecy): next monday, biomed, room 202, 5.30). That Wednesday we will stage with EM the final OpenSource, with Lydon as MC.

Second: 'Where in the World is OBL'? is showing at our very own Avon. Who would be game for a big-screening, this Tuesday (ie, tomorrow) of one of our favorite filmmakers? Let me add an incentive: a free screening. I have some loose discretionary change to host students for a social event - I think the powers that oversee had a tea party in mind - so anyone interested should meet up, say 8.30, Paragon/Viva, for 9.15 showing? Tea will be on tap.

Finally, we're getting booted out of the J-forum so the honors thesis students can do their IR thing, so we will be moving up two floors to the mckinney seminar room...and if people want to hear one or more of the presentations we can perhaps negotiate that (especially since I have three presenting this year).

VTY
JDD